A standard hand-operated device for transferring a film from a carrier tape to a substrate as described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,849,064 and 4,853,074 has a housing made of two parts that are pivoted together. The housing has two rotatable spindles coupled to each other by a slip-permitting transmission. A cartridge is held in this housing and has fitting on the pivot pins a supply spool and a takeup spool for the tape and an applicator element at one end. The tape passes from the supply spool over the applicator element which is used to press the tape against the substrate for transfer of the film from the tape to the substrate. After the film is stripped from the tape, this tape is wound up on the takeup spool which itself is provided with a one-way brake allowing it to rotate only in one direction.
In such a system the cartridge contains the supply spool, the takeup spool, and the applicator foot so that putting a new supply of tape into the applicator is a fairly simple job. The cartridge, however, is a fairly complex item that is very difficult to recycle. First of all the plastic of the cartridge body itself is invariably different from that of the support tape and normally also from the spools, and the applicator foot is frequently a separate part of yet another resin. Thus to recycle the device it is necessary to break it apart and sort the various parts according to the resin they are made of. The tape is left wound on the takeup spool and the spool and tape are of different resins, but separating the tape from the spool is such an onerous operation that this part is typically discarded without recycling. All in all, breaking apart and sorting the parts of such a cartridge is more work than the modest recycle value of its parts warrants.
Another disadvantage with the known cassette is that it is quite bulky and expensive. It must be large enough to contain, to start with, the full supply spool and empty takeup spool, and it includes the critical applicator foot since the tape must be exactly guide over and maintained taut around this foot so that loading a cartridge without such a foot is almost impossible.